Blog outlining massive fraud in the Australian listed investment company (LIC) and broader financial sector

Thursday, 24 April 2014

Conman Michael Featherstone harasses this blog

Michael "Mick" Featherstone is a former Gold Coast police officer who turned to a life of petty fraud. According to Crikey, Mick Featherstone was involved with the illegal pyramid scheme 1CellNet a decade ago, as well as with a melange of similar "predictive software scams", with names such as Ezyshoppe, Cyber Wall St, Cell Wireless, World Games Inc, Virtual Games Global, Global Stock Game, 1GlobalVillage Club and Aspiritus. Perversely, Mick also ran a business offering to "help" the victims of such schemes.

Mick then founded a private investigation firm, which offers flagrantly illegal services such as phone tapping. In a 2008 article, Michael Featherstone openly admitted to being a criminal, routinely breaking Australian privacy laws and trespassing during his "investigations". But as Mick put it, his victims "rarely take the matter to police". The Gold Coast police apparently took no action against their former colleague marketing an openly criminal business. This is one of the few places on earth where you can boast of a criminal enterprise in the newspapers without any repercussions.

Mick's next enterprise was internet reputation management through Phoenix Global, also known as Internet Reputation Australia. Mick now claims to be a professional in the field of internet reputational risk, while openly admitting crimes on the internet. Phoenix Global claims offices in major Australian cities that upon closer inspection turn out to be P.O. boxes. Using this company, Mick issued frivolous threats to take down posts from this blog.

The posts detail Avestra Asset Management's involvement in the Formosa Auto-Trade scam. Using flyers handed out on the street, this scam involved the sale of "auto-trading" laptops for $30,000 to gullible investors, who were promised extravagant annual returns on forex markets, "no knowledge or effort required". All you had to do was buy a $30,000 auto-trading laptop, sit back, and your return would be $5,000 a month in perpetuity.

Avestra has now gained control of listed funds manager AG Financial (AHA.AX), embezzling controlled funds by related party fraud, and is loath to have its past exposed. The fact that Avestra would associate itself with the likes of Michael "Mick" Featherstone speaks volumes.